FrankNFurter writes to note the launch yesterday of the FSF's BadVista campaign against Microsoft's new operating system. BadVista's aim is to inform users about the alleged harms inflicted by Vista on the user and about free software alternatives. Quoting program administrator John Sullivan: "Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care."

sdriver writes "If you thought it was only the US giving Darwin a hard time, Russia has its own problems starting with evolution. A student has 'sued the St. Petersburg city education committee, claiming the 10th-grade biology textbook used at the Cervantes Gymnasium was offensive to believers and that teachers should offer an alternative to Darwin's famous theory.' The suit, the first of its kind in Russia, is being dismissed out of hand by the principal and teachers. The teacher of the science class had apparently even taken the step of stating at the start of the school year that there were other theories on the origin of life."

GameSpot reports that Wikipedia has closed the next-gen console entries because of nigh-onto constant defacement from angry fanbois. From the article: "Last week the complete Nintendo company page was replaced with the phrase "Nintendo Sucks!!!!!!!!!" briefly before the Web site reloaded the original entry. Previous vandalism efforts include someone doodling on a Hitler moustache and horns on the photograph for the entry for Bill Gates, and the sentence "Microsoft is Zomg T3h Suck0r!!!!!!" briefly replacing the computer software company's page. All of the next-generation consoles make it into the company's top 40 list of most revised pages, with the Nintendo Wii at number 10 (12,780 revisions), the PS3 at number 21 (9,894 revisions), and the Xbox 360 at 25 (9,481 revisions.) Interestingly, the Wii seems to attract more conflicts of opinion on the site than the subjects of Scientology (8,475 revisions), God (7,537 revisions), and even Britney Spears (9,886 revisions.)"